BludgerTrack: 52.6-47.4 to Labor

A quiet week for polling ahead of the budget, but the weekly poll aggregate nonetheless maintains the weakening trend for the Coalition and Tony Abbott.

With pollsters generally preferring to hold their fire until after the budget, this has been a fairly quiet week for polling, with only a pre-budget ReachTEL poll for Fairfax joining the regular weekly Essential Research. The BludgerTrack poll aggregate maintains its trend of four weeks in having Labor and Palmer United up, and the Coalition and the Greens down. Labor’s gain of 0.8% to 37.8% puts it 3.7% higher than where it was four weeks ago, while the Coalition’s 38.8% represents a descent over the same period from 42.0%. The Greens continue to cool down after the boost which followed the WA Senate election and the aberrant Nielsen result that immediately followed, while the Coalition decline has been reflected by a steady rise for Palmer United, from 4.3% to 6.2%.

On two-party preferred, Labor makes a slight 0.2% gain this week to 52.6%, its equal best headline result from BludgerTrack in its nearly 18 months of existence. In New South Wales the gain for Labor is 0.6%, giving it an extra gain there on the otherwise unchanged seat projection. The Essential Research poll also provides a new set of data for leadership ratings, which sees the trendlines continue in the directions established by Newspoll last week: Bill Shorten pulling out of the summer slump that followed his early honeymoon ratings, Tony Abbott down sharply on his mediocre early year figures, and a linear trend on preferred prime minister getting ever nearer to parity.

Methodological note: It has been noted that ReachTEL has been leaning slightly to Labor relative to other polls recently, something that was not evident in the pre-election polling on which its BludgerTrack bias measures had hiterto been based. Consequently, I am now applying to ReachTEL the same bias adjustment procedure I use for Morgan, the upshot of which is that its deviance over time from the voting intention results modelled by BludgerTrack is measured and controlled for. This adjustment has caused Labor’s gain this week to be slightly less than it would have been otherwise.

Morning all. I was pleased to see Shorten showed some backbone and take a stand against Hockey’s Tea Party Budget. It was an accurate call, too. He is not an inspiring speaker, but it was a good speech.

The only point I disagree with is the opposition to re-indexing/raising the fuel excise, which is sensible policy and should be done. The financial pain is less than alleged, and only suffered by those who made stupid purchasing decisions, and then refuse to change them.

Where Shorten is on weaker ground will be his inability to explain how Labor would pay for its own unfunded reforms, notably Gonski and NDIS. Introducing reforms without adding the means to pay for them is really no reform at all. Also, I do not mean to imply by that I regard Conski as a credible reform of education, as apposed to buying votes from teachers.

So far neither side has faced up to the real issues needing tax reform – negative gearing, tax loopholes for trusts, and excessive super concessions. Presumably too many members of both sides abuse these lurks themselves!

Former greyhound race caller.......Ray Hadley has flatly refused to comment on the breakdown of his marriage with his second wife, Suzanne, despite it being the talk of Sydney’s rugby league circles.

Suzanne has now embarked on a new relationship with Canberra Raiders assistant coach Matt Parish, who is also assistant coach for the NSW team in the upcoming State of Origin. To say the situation has created a political minefield around the corridors of the NRL would be putting it mildly.

NSW coach Laurie Daley yesterday confirmed Hadley had applied undue pressure on him to have Parish sacked, having lobbied various NRL figures for weeks since Parish and Suzanne began their relationship.

I voted against the Libs with Work Choices as it went to far and fundamentally changedthe path of Australia away from what I wished for the country. After reviewing the budget I will again change my vote as the surcharge to visit a doctor goes against the principles of universal health care which I 100% support as a Right for all Australians.

Yes, feel free to bag me from your high horse.

Yes, the swng is on in voter land. All the libs voters I know of in Eden Monaro are openly bagging the government.

rummel
You represent a swinging voter. Nothing wrong with that. Actually I wish everyone was a swinging voter looking closelya t issues and policies as they change.
But that is asking for a bit too much.

I gather he is saying that because less people will be visiting the doctor (because they can’t afford it), those who do will get in quicker and easier. How that actually improves health outcomes is a bit beyond me.

It improves health outcomes for wealthy people … and who else matters to the LNP?

As a swinging voter I am interested in your views on PUP. How much influence does Palmer represent?

PUP is nothing more then a five minute parking space for disenchanted right voters. If the libs are upsetting you, then your not going to park behind Labor as it’s to soon after the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd circus. I think PUP represents the Centre Right vote upset with the libs, but don’t care what Palmer really stand for at the moment

Carr might be a first class pain in the arse when he’s at his incisive and arrogant best, but he’s still the sharpest, most knowlegable and most erudite tool in this little workshop.

I agree.

I often disagree with his position but I certainly respect his intellect, his knowledge and his strategic thinking. I never dismiss his opinions lightly. They deserve serious consideration whatever conclusion you come to.

BK
Posted Friday, May 16, 2014 at 9:07 am | PERMALINK
Shorten and Labor should be working hard now to coming up with plausible policies to address the fiscal imbalance. If they don’t the MSM will turn on them.

I think they have plenty to work with in ending the current tax rorts untouched by Hockey’s budget.

There is majority support for the “deficit tax” on high income earners and this support would probably extend to other measures which would mainly affect those rich enough to afford it.

For example, the novated lease schemes are still being advertised for their tax advantages.

Of course, the MSM would probably turn on Labor for proposing these measures but the majority of voters would most likely be in favour if that meant the $7 GP tax and other nasties did not happen.

Carr had so much potential. He was a very bright and intelligent man. If only the party apperatchiks did not stand in his way and had let him get on with his agenda.

If the electricity generators were sold in 1997, it would have been worth over $35 billion and with the much cheaper cost of building transport then, we could have built everything we needed….. Northwest rail, Southwest rail, Parramatta to Epping, Second Harbour rail crossing, EVERYTHING. We would not have the worlds second worst transport system as we do today.

After Keatings federal government seperated generation from distribution, it made no sense to keep the generators in public hands.

By 2008, it was worth $11 or $12 billion and now worth even less. WHAT A SHAME.

To sum up a string of posts from last night, here is what you will not read from either Deblonay or T.P

Putin

(1) actively promotes anti gay legislation, and has done nothing to put a halt to the murderous (literally) campaign of homophobic behaviour.

(2) is complicit in the mass murder of journalists who oppose him

(3) is personally responsible for the illegal imperial grab of Crimea

(4) is complicit in the deaths of around 60,000 Chechen civilians

(5) is complicit in a campaign to suppress the opposition by means of bashing, arrests, other forms of violent and non-violent harrassment up to, and including, the use of jail and the perversion of the use of institutions for the insane.

Using his energy blackmail strategy, Putin has the Ukrainians by the economic balls and will squeeze and squeeze until they forego their territorial integrity, the Russian empire will grow a bit more, and the Ukrainians will be deprived of their right to self-determination.

Oh, and those Ukrainian gays who will, as a result, fall into Putin’s hands had better watch out. They will be vilified. They will be illegal. They will be bashed. They will be tortored. The will, literally, be pissed on. They will be murdered. The perpetrators, ofen paid and uniformed agents of Putin’s state apparatus, will go scot free.

It appears to me that the LNP are pushing their plan much faster than anyone was expecting. In 2013 the Liberals were pretty much a policy-free zone. All our problems will be fixed if we stop the boats, ditch the carbon and mining taxes on stop wasting money. When asked how money was being wasted, they mentioned batts and cheques to dead people. Public servants would suffer but not nice people like oneself and family.

Of course now we know they thought the money was being wasted on Medicare and pensions. I always thought that the IPA’s 75 point plan represented where the LNP wanted to take the country, but I never imagined that they would want to implement so much of it in their first term.

So now we know. The Coalition’s campaigning during the term of the last Parliament and in particular during the 2013 was fraudulent. They have a mandate to do very little and certainly not tear down the long-standing Australian compact. They won government on the basis of lies. As Bill Shorten said, bring it on. We can have an election knowing what the LNP really want to do.

Max the Axe now wants to take up the option gifted to Sydney Airport’s owners when the airport was privatised by Howard in 2002.

THEY have argued for years that Sydney doesn’t need Badgerys Creek, but now ­Sydney Airport Corporation Limited could snap up the rights to build and run it.

With the Federal Government giving the multi-billion-dollar project the green light, Sydney Airport Corporation Limited yesterday changed its tune on Badgerys.

Speaking at the Sydney ­Airport AGM yesterday, chairman Max Moore-Wilton suggested the contract to build and run Badgerys was too valuable an opportunity to pass up.

Mr Moore-Wilton said Sydney Airport would engage with the government on a “constructive and commercial basis” on planning for the new airport and pointed out that his company had “first right of refusal” to operate a second airport in Sydney.

Rummel’s entitled to his opinion, and to change his mind if he wishes. Imagine if progressive political forces in this country took the same scornful approach to a voter swinging back to them that you have taken to Rummel.

Health Minister Peter Dutton has predicted the introduction of a fee to visit the doctor will improve health outcomes by making it easier for patients to get an appointment and for doctors to spend more time with patients.

Dutton is inadvertently confessing – the fee id intended to reduce the use of medical services. That’s the plan. From the LNP peculiar point of view, less service means better health. If this were the case, $7.00 would not be enough. At each point of escalation in price, quality of health outcomes would go up….This is an absurdity.

Fortunately, the Senate appears very likely to reject these changes and many others.

This invites the question…how will the LNP be able to both reduce the deficit and repeal the carbon pricing mechansim/ETS? Of course, they won’t be able to. Very luckily for the budget, PPL and ERF are dead in the water.

“All budgets are merely promises. What you are judged by is whether you can deliver,” a frontbencher notes. A backbencher asks the very pertinent question: “Does the leadership have the ability to sell what they have philosophically prepared in this budget – their program to change the nation?”

Rummel’s entitled to his opinion, and to change his mind if he wishes. Imagine if progressive political forces in this country took the same scornful approach to a voter swinging back to them that you have taken to Rummel.

I think you should pull your head in.

I’m entitled to my opinion as much as him.

He is not a swinging voter but one who believed abbott’s garbage and has only just worked it out – despite being told many times before the election what would happen – ie what is now happening.

He voted to allow this to happen and sneered constantly at any side of politics who would have prevented abbott from getting into power.

It’s the sort of scandal that is so quintessentially Sydney: the powerful radio and sports broadcaster nursing a broken heart, his estranged wife and her new boyfriend, the former football star turned NRL coach.

Former greyhound race caller turned talkback powerhouse Ray Hadley has flatly refused to comment on the breakdown of his marriage with his second wife, Suzanne, despite it being the talk of Sydney’s rugby league circles.
...
When ... asked about claims, raised on Monday night’s Media Watch program on the ABC, that he had influenced his close associate, The Daily Telegraph’s editor Paul Whittaker, to pull a story about his marriage breakdown and Parish, Hadley declined to elaborate on the specifics, offering only: "Obviously you have a private life and I don’t discuss your private life either on my program or away from my program. I’ll be making no comment."

missed it because I was watching Adelaide beat Collingwood with my son playing at half time]

Dio Terrific night for you.

Isn’t it just the best watching the kids having a wow of a time in the big ground. We loved watching our sons, then grandson and even our granddaughter on the SCG when she filled in for a sick little fella.

Combet answering so firmly at RC. I miss him as a pollie. He’s a good bloke.

The budget is also a forecast on the economy. In this respect, the budget is already out of date. Iron ore and coal prices are falling as Chinese and global steel markets pass their saturation points; in the domestic economy, home building and other construction have passed their peak and started to recede taking household credit demand with them. These forces really mean the economy is going to struggle to grow at all in the coming year and that unemployment is bound to increase even as the LNP threaten poverty for those who lose their jobs.

Every time Hockey or Abbott talk about the “problem” with the budget and implement “unavoidable” spending cuts, they will encourage households to restrain their spending and business to postpone its investment. In an economy with already weak private demand, such talk and such actions risk tipping the economy into a demand-led contraction.

Such a reversal in the economy would be very very difficult to arrest. Hockey’s chant about growing deficits would become self-fulfilling as tax receipts fell and outlays climbed.

The LNP’s political narrative and the health of the economy are now in conflict with each other. Every time they talk up the need for cuts, they increase the chances of a household-led recession.

They are very very close to completely wrecking things after less than one year in office.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.